


Living in high cotton

by my_deer_friend



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alex is from the big city, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Edging, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, John is real southern, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Porn With Very Little Plot, Strangers to Lovers, and a horse boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:27:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29967750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_deer_friend/pseuds/my_deer_friend
Summary: Alex is forced to travel down to the Laurens family ranch in South Carolina for a work meeting. It's his worst nightmare - he hates the country, hates backwards southerners and cornfields and ridiculous accents - but most of all, he hates the stupid, gorgeous farmhand with magnificent thighs who's making fun of him.Fuck that guy.Or, you know...
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 24
Kudos: 60





	Living in high cotton

**Author's Note:**

> This story was prompted by a silly Tumblr - so you can thank @ThatWouldBee-Enough for sparking this idea.
> 
> Special thanks to @cyanspica for answering one million annoying questions about southern minutiae, and for coming up with the title!

Alex is so far along the road to Bumfuck, South Carolina that he loses his GPS signal.

It’s the final straw. Alex _knows_ he should have turned down this trip. It’s preposterous to travel half-way down the East Coast just to put the final polish on the wording of this negotiation with Senator Laurens. Both he and Washington know this is a power play - getting them to go so far out of their way, off familiar ground - but the deal needs to be concluded before the end of the weekend if it’s going to hit the committee agenda deadline, and Laurens made some excuse about family business taking him out of the city. So it was give up or come here, and a decision like that makes itself if you’re Alexander Hamilton. Not to mention, when Washington says stuff like _I don’t trust anyone else to handle this in my place_ \- well, Alex can’t refuse a request like _that_ either.

He fucking should have, though, he thinks moodily, grumbling under his breath as he drives slowly down a fucking middle-of-nowhere gravel road, farms stretched out on either side, and not a single sign of civilisation to be seen for miles. 

Of _course_ Laurens couldn’t meet him at the Charleston Airport Hyatt like a civilised human. No, this had to happen at the family fucking ranch out here in the sticks, the kind of place city folk get lured into and then murdered by inbred cults. Alex glares out of his window - fucking cow pastures on the right, swaying green stalks as far as he can see on the left. He doesn’t even know if this is corn or wheat or cotton or whatever the fuck it is that they grow out here - because no reasonable person in the modern world needs to know bullshit like that - but no matter what it is, it looks ominous. Cult-y.

It’s probably full of bugs too. 

He’s _not_ built for the fucking country.

Neither is his rental car, which is rattling along on an insufficient suspension and which has started making a rather worrying clacking sound when he goes over a bump too fast.

He’s not going fast now. He’s fucking lost. Been lost for - oh, probably half an hour? He should have turned around, but Alexander Hamilton does not fucking give in to his circumstances. No, he keeps trundling along at five miles an hour, hoping for a sign from whatever version of Yeehaw Country Jesus the people around here believe in.

Maybe being murdered by cults would be better. Save him the embarrassment of turning up an hour late to this extremely sensitive negotiation.

He’s moments away from breaking into tears of angry frustration when he spots a country hick standing near some mangy brown cows at the fence. Next to him is a saddled horse - a horse, in this day and age. It’s covered in black and white patches that make it half-look like a cow itself - like a _real_ cow from the children’s books, not these off-brand brown ones. 

Well, he’s got no choice. 

Alex drives up slowly, not sure how the horse or the man will react to the presence of a car. He doesn’t see a gun, but that doesn't mean this guy isn’t packing. Hopes he’s not trespassing, because who knows how people here decide to mete out law and justice, this far away from tarred roads and Starbucks and a stable internet connection?

He pulls over a few yards away - well, no, he just stops the car, there’s no shoulder here and no traffic to be blocking anyway - and takes a second to study the guy, who seems to either have not noticed his approach or decided to ignore him. Typical. Not very friendly to outsiders in these parts. Nothing at all like New Yorkers.

He seems to be about Alex’s age, but the resemblance stops there. He’s much better tanned, for one, and dressed in the backcountry uniform of jeans and boots and a plaid shirt and what may as well be a cowboy hat if he’s going to wear it at _that_ angle. He also looks relaxed, in a way Alex hasn’t been since-- Ever.

At least he seems docile enough. Probably not a cult leader or anything. Just some farmhand.

Alex gets out of the car and approaches, conscious of his out-of-place navy suit and the way dust immediately clings to his shoes and the cuffs of his pants. 

He’ll be damned if the guy isn’t _petting_ a cow. He’s got a dopey sort of smile on his face, and Alex can't quite figure out if that expression means this guy is sizing it up for the juiciest cuts or preparing to take it behind the barn for some X-rated action. Alex scrunches up his nose.

Nice ass, he thinks grumpily. Pity about the cow-fucking.

“Um, excuse me?” he says, when he’s a few yards out, painfully aware of his New York twang.

The man turns to look up at him, an easy smile on his freckled face. “Well, hey there.”

“Can you help me out?”

The man gives the cow’s damp snout a final stroke - _gross_ \- and turns to look at him, then up at the car.

“What seems to be the problem?” He’s got an accent, but it’s mild, which means Alex won’t have to muddle his way through half-swallowed words and car-crash contractions.

“I’m looking for the Laurens homestead. Do you know where it is?”

“Sure do.”

Alex waits a beat, two, three. “Well?”

“Ah, see, you’ve come a little outta your way.”

“You don’t-” _fucking_ “-say.”

The man reaches down, plucks a stalk of grass, and puts it between his teeth. Christ. There’s a gallon of mockery in his gesture. So much for that famous warm southern welcome.

“Not too far, though. I reckon you can go up ’round the back.”

Alex lets out a low, tight sigh. He looks one way down the featureless road, then the other. “Care to enlighten me?”

“There’s a turnoff,” he drawls pleasantly, propping his tanned forearms on the fence behind him and leaning back onto them. He nods back down the way Alex came. “Half mile back - over yonder, just before the wind pump.”

He hitches one bootheel on the lower rung of the fence and his jeans tighten across his thigh. 

Alex yanks his eyes up. “I didn’t see a turnoff.”

He shrugs. “Well, it’s there.”

He’s going to miss it again, and be even more late. Fuck. “Was there, like, a marker? Street sign or something?”

The guy narrows his brows for a second, then laughs like Alex has said something absurd. 

“Want me to show ya?” he offers instead around an easy smile.

Alex looks back down the road, weighing his options. He’s already getting both dusty _and_ sweaty, and he’s pretty sure the senator is not one of those likes-to-be-kept-waiting types. He doesn’t want some farmhand condescending to him, but he’s all out of better saviours.

“Um. Okay, fine. Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome,” the man says, and honest-to-god tips his hat. Alex turns quickly so he can roll his eyes, half at the gesture itself and half at how inexplicably charming it comes off.

He walks back to the car, expecting the man to follow him - but then turns to watch as he goes up to the grazing horse, clucks to get its attention, then swings up into the saddle with the effortless grace of someone who was born there. Without tightening the reins, he nudges the horse into an ambling walk.

 _Thighs,_ is all Alex’s brain can process for a moment.

“Takin’ your sweet time,” the guys says lightly, when he catches Alex staring at him.

Alex shakes off his distraction. “Don’t you just want to drive with me?”

“What, and then I gotta walk back to get my horse?”

Yeah, okay. Good point. But Alex is not in the mood to be sassed. “Can you keep up on that thing?”

The man eases back in the saddle with a leathery creak and squints against the sun. “Reckon so.”

The only thing worse than the country is _people_ from the country. 

It takes Alex about seven moves to turn his car around, given the poor state of the narrow road. Much as he would prefer to keep his window closed, mostly against the dust, it feels incredibly rude when this random cowboy wannabe is trying to help. He inches it open, but is immediately stuck for small-talk options. It’s not like they have civilization here, and Alex is damned if he’s going to make a fool of himself talking about sports or - uh. Guns? Budget beer?

Feeling a little sour at the rude treatment he’s received, he speeds up a little, forcing the guy to nudge his horse into a trot. But of course this pettiness foils him in return, because those _thighs_ are working double-time. Thank god there’s nothing for him to crash into here.

“What brings you out here?” the guy asks easily, unperturbed at the pace he’s riding at.

“Important government business,” Alex says with an arrogant shrug. He hopes the implied _not something you’d understand_ comes through loud and clear.

“You must be real important, to be comin’ out here to see the Senator.”

“You could say that.” _More important than you’ll ever be._ Not everyone can be the deputy departmental manager for policy for a Virginia congressman, after all.

The guy hums and nods thoughtfully. He seems content not to continue the conversation.

After a few minutes, the guy slows to a halt and waves at - well, yes, technically maybe that _was_ once a road, but it’s just an overgrown track now.

“No wonder I didn’t see it,” Alex says with a sigh.

“Just follow it for about a mile and a half, you’ll see the house then. Your car’ll handle it if you just go slow.” 

“I don’t have time for slow.”

“Too bad. Slow’s your only option.”

“Fuck.” He glances up. “Oh, uh, sorry.”

“Well, you better get goin’. Rent a truck next time.”

“I’m not planning on coming back,” Alex snaps.

The guy laughs. “Suit yourself. I’ll be seein’ you around.” He gives Alex another tilt of the hat.

He highly doubts _that._ “Thanks for showing me the way.”

“Don’t mention it.” The farmhand turns and rides off, and although Alex thinks _good riddance_ almost on reflex, he admits to stealing one last look at the broad shoulders and slim waist in his rearview mirror before he drives on.

\---

The negotiation is slow and intense, not helped along by the defensiveness that’s been stewing inside him all day, nor by Laurens’ shrewd ability to dig into their real motives and pressure points. Alex has a minimum list of concessions he needs to win, and he does - with a few extra to spare - but it’s not as well as he wishes he’d done, and it’s dark outside by the time he looks up.

The senator puts his signature of the final draft with a tired flourish. 

“You’ll be staying for supper, of course,” he says.

Alex looks out at the unnatural, pitch-black darkness. Don’t these people even have street lights? How are you supposed to avoid the muggers? 

“Sorry, but I need to head back. It’s late.”

“Nonsense. You can’t be driving back at this time of night.”

Oh. Oh, so he _is_ going to be murdered by a cult. He makes a mental note to send Washington photos of the draft before he gets hacked to pieces.

“My hotel’s in town,” he says pointedly. _Where we should have had this meeting, you bastard._

“We have guest rooms made up. I really don’t recommend making the trip. It isn’t safe.”

Cults, Alex thinks - he knew it. Or drunk bumpkins with shotguns. Wendigo or sasquatch or lizard man or whatever the local cornfields monstrosity is. 

The senator must read some alarm in his face, because he elaborates smoothly. “You might run off the road, or hit something - a cow, or a deer.”

“Oh.”

“My boy Jack will be here soon, he’ll show you up to a room.”

No sooner has he said this, then the door opens and the farmhand from earlier walks in like he owns the place. He’s still dusty and dressed like he’s spent the whole day outdoors, but the senator doesn’t seem to mind it. The guy turns to Alex and gives him a smug fucking gorgeous dimpled smile - _fuck_ \- and doesn’t look the least bit surprised to find him here.

“Glad you found your way.” Alex just stares, his mouth a little open. “Y’all wrapping up in here?” he asks, turning to Laurens. “Food’s almost ready.”

Of course they do farm-to-fucking-table here - pet the cow, then shoot it in its cute little face and make it into a stew. 

“Just about, thanks.” The senator nods towards Alex. “This is my colleague, Alexander Hamilton, who’s been kind enough to come down from New York. He’ll be staying the night. Mr Hamilton, my son - John.”

The shoe drops a millisecond before the introduction is made, and he almost misses the name in the chorus of _fuckfuckfuckfuck_ that rings out in his brain. 

“How do you do,” John says, extending a hand, smirking like he’s played the best joke in the history of the world.

Cow slobber, Alex remembers as he stares at it. “A pleasure.” He papers over his cringe as he accepts the handshake, then tries to hide the way he wipes his hand on the side of his thigh once it’s released. Nice firm grip though. Eleven out of ten forearm. 

“Mind setting Mr Hamilton up with a room before we eat? I’m sure he’d like to freshen up before supper.”

“Yessir,” John says lightly, then turns to him. “Can I get your bag for you?”

 _How nice,_ Alex thinks, then reflexively, _fuck you,_ then, _shit._ “Oh. Uh. I don’t have anything with me.”

“That’s no problem,” John says, easy and smirking. “I can lend you something to sleep in, and we’ll rustle you up a toothbrush. There’s always spares. Come along.”

Feeling like the decision has been made for him without consultation, but with his reserves of energy to negotiate sucked dry, Alex shrugs and trails after John as he leaves the room. They’re most of the way to a giant staircase when a preteen boy barrels across the room and flings himself at John, who laughs and catches him with an oof.

Children, Alex thinks with a shudder.

“Jackie-Jackie-Jackie,” the kid screeches. “C’mon c’mon I gotta show you my--” He catches sight of Alex and instantly goes shy and bright red. “Um.”

“Jemmy,” John says. “Mr Hamilton is staying with us for the night. My terror of a little brother, James.”

“Well hey there mister,” the boy says with a stiff little nod.

Alex gives him a tight smile, which is a lot better than the grimace this situation really deserves, but nobody even bothers to praise him for the effort.

“Hey, Jem, you wanna go track down one’a those spare toothbrushes we keep for guests?”

The kid bolts off without so much as a goodbye. Children really are the worst.

John gives him an excessively familiar eye-roll at these antics. “Well, let’s go before we get accosted again.” He puts a friendly hand on Alex’s shoulder. 

Not entirely _friendly,_ Alex calculates. The palm lingers just a second longer than it strictly needs to.

Hmm. 

They head upstairs, then down a long corridor. John opens a door at the far end to reveal - not, thank fuck, the dreaded horror of a country-style room done up in pink lace and pastoral paintings, but a surprisingly clean and modern room accented with charcoal furnishings. There’s even an ensuite. 

John waves him in. “Here you are, Mr Hamilton.”

“Alex.”

“Huh?”

“Call me Alex. Please. Mr Hamilton is my--” He cuts off. Nope. The less said about _him,_ the better.

“Sure thing.” 

Alex steps inside. “This is - nice?”

John leans on the doorframe, hands casually tucked into his pockets - all the better to accentuate his broad arms and the coy tilt of his face. What a catastrophic waste, Alex laments, allowing himself a quick ogle before he turns back to the room, that he’s a bible-thumping cowfucker.

“What were you expectin’?” John asks, eyebrow raised.

Before Alex is forced to lie, there’s a noisy clatter of approaching footsteps. The boy from earlier skids up again, thrusts a packaged toothbrush into his brother’s hands, then dashes off again without a word. John reaches it over to him - holding onto it for just one moment too long, flashing another smug smile.

“Gimme a minute.”

He vanishes. Alex slides off his suit jacket, drops his satchel on a little armchair and sits down on the bed. He’s just starting to feel antsy - three whole minutes with nothing to do will have that effect - when John reappears with some clothes. He reaches them across, and Alex’s hand bumps into his by-- Nope, _that_ wasn’t an accidental touch either.

John’s flirting with him. He is! This is simply preposterous and Alex is - not upset at all, actually. He’s not _blind._ Even the accent is oddly charming now that he thinks about it.

“Just come down the stairs when you’re ready,” John says. “We’re fixin’ to eat in ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Sure.”

John leaves him be, closing the door. Alex pouts thoughtfully. This whole trip could be working out very much in his favour, and honestly he couldn’t come up with a better way to stick it to Laurens for this insane inconvenience than by sucking his son’s dick in his own house.

He runs his hands over the clothes he’s been given - soft, comfortable sweatpants and a well-worn college t-shirt. Clearly John’s. Another smooth little move. Alex unfolds the shirt and is greeted by the word ‘cocks’ spelled out in bold, unashamed, sports-team cursive.

Motherfucker.

\---

Alex joins the family for dinner - and it’s really the whole family, multiple kids and an uncle and aunt. 

The food’s greasy, salty, aggressively authentic - the sort of thing you’d pay fifty bucks for the privilege of being served back in the city. Alex ate a meal this sumptuous with the Washingtons once. That had been Thanksgiving. This is _Thursday._

Hell, if family values come drenched in gravy like this, he might need to reconsider some of his policy stances.

He plays it cool, and only takes a second helping after at least half the people at the table absolutely insist on it. He was hesitant about the soggy-looking greens the first time, but he takes a big spoonful now that he’s figured out they’re crammed full of bacon chunks and grease. He grabs a hunk of cornbread too, more to soak up all the sauces than because it’s anything special. Right.

The conversation is lively and he’s welcomed right into their debates - and for the most part he minds his manners; now that there’s the prospect of something fun happening with John, he doesn’t exactly want to piss off his entire family. (And, see, that’s what Washington doesn’t get - Alex is perfectly able to behave himself if he’s just given the proper incentives.) 

There’s edges, of course, like in any family - sure, yes, he knows _all_ about that - discussion topics and throwaway lines that evoke sideways glances and awkward throat-clearing. But somehow it’s all the cosier for it, because Alex realises they’re not putting on some sort of pantomime for him. This is just them, spending time together. Huh.

Dinner is a two-hour affair, at least for the adults - the kids dash off as soon as they’re permitted - and Laurens is not stingy with the wine. Then there’s pecan pie, and John grabs a bottle of whiskey from the sideboard that’s apparently from some local micro-distillery that does things _the old-fashioned way_. It tastes - just like whiskey. Alex keeps his mouth shut.

Shut, but quirked into a little half-smile, because John’s _staring._ Has been staring all dinner long. Alex only knows that because he’s been staring, too. They keep catching each other, like a pair of ridiculous teenagers, and honestly he doesn’t believe for a second that their mutual eye-fucking has gone unnoticed.

Once the meal is over, Alex is left to his own devices, given the run of the house with all the earnestness that makes him think they genuinely don’t expect him to steal something. He’s had a full day, but it’s way too early for bedtime. At least according to the clock, which is the normal way people tell what time it is; as far as nature is concerned, though, the world is pitch black and silent, other than the background hum of insects. It’s disorienting. 

He wanders out onto the porch. The air is suspiciously fresh, like the people here _haven’t_ soaked their surroundings in piss.

John waits a whole ten minutes before slipping out to join him.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks with a quiet, knowing smile.

“It’s too quiet here.”

He hums. “Yeah, I guess it’s nothing like the city.”

Alex rolls his eyes a little. “You couldn’t be further from New York if you were on the moon.”

“D.C. gets pretty loud too,” John says with a shrug. “Must say I prefer this.”

Alex gives him a sideways glance. “You live in D.C.?”

John laughs lightly. “Would be pretty hard to run a law firm from down here.” 

“You’re a _lawyer?”_ Alex can’t keep enough of the surprise from his voice for this to sound anything other than rude.

John picks up on it and levels him with a raised eyebrow. “Why’s that so surprisin’?”

Why indeed, Alex thinks. Appearances aren’t deceiving; no one’s ever misjudged _him_ for being a brown, poor, temperamental loudmouth or anything. “Sorry.”

“Nah, I’m just messin’ with ya.”

“You do that a lot,” Alex observes. “You were kind of a dick to me earlier on purpose, weren’t you?”

“Tell me you weren’t judging everything and everyone the minute you got here.”

Fair. “Not fair.”

“I know how people see the south. Funny thing is, y'all are completely right _and_ completely wrong.”

“That so?”

John hums. “We’re becomin’ a lot more progressive than we get credit for. For one, it’s much easier being gay than it used to be.”

“You’re really trying to tell me people round here don’t care where you stick your dick?” Alex certainly doesn’t care, as long as the dick is John’s and the place it’s being stuck is somewhere in his body. He’s liberal like that.

John shrugs and pouts coyly. Smugly. _Suggestively._

Alex can’t help needling. “Didn’t think that sort of thing was tolerated here.”

John rolls his eyes. “It’s not the fifties, you know. Or the, uh, early-two-thousands,” he corrects with a touch more embarrassment. Fucking finally. A crack. 

Alex shoots him a sideways glance. Does this asshole have to look so delicious from _every_ angle, with his stupid curls starting to escape from his messy bun? 

Damn it. If Alex going to get good and fucked tonight, he needs to start making some serious moves. John’s glances have been warming up well past ‘politely curious’, but to really get things heated, he finds that the direct approach is usually the best one. He’s either going to get some nice big hands on - or _in_ \- his sensitive places, or he can get rejected efficiently and make do with his own hand in that spacious shower he spotted in the ensuite.

“So, what do you do for fun around here?” Alex asks mock-casually, hoping that his little suggestive lilt carries across.

John looks out over the dark garden. “Oh, you know - huntin’, fishin’, grillin’. Just taking things easy.”

God, he’s impossible! 

John might like all this dancing around, but Alex doesn't have _time_ for a whole careful flirtation now. What he does have time for is stepping in so close that his shoulder presses into John’s bicep - fuck, that’s some firm muscle, not a lot of give even with his arm all relaxed like this - and then leaning into his solid frame.

“And after dark?” he asks, a little more pointedly.

“You city folk are always cuttin’ right to the point, huh?” John murmurs.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Don’t you ‘city folk’ me, mister D.C.-law-firm.”

“Yeah, well,” John shrugs, jostling his delicious arm against Alex’s. “You can take the boy out of the country, but…”

But, it seems, you can’t get the country boy’s dick in the city boy without some pretty tedious verbal foreplay.

“Fucking _fine,_ ” Alex grumbles under his breath. He turns, keeping himself pressed close, grips into the V at the top of John’s ridiculous plaid shirt, and stretches up onto his toes. “If you’re not gonna man up and kiss me…”

He makes sure he’s telegraphed this next move well enough for John to duck out if he needs to, because it wouldn’t be the best thing for his career to get caught sexually assaulting a sitting US senator’s son. But he doesn’t need to worry, because John _does_ man up.

There’s not a shred of his nice manners in the hot, sudden kiss - and thank fuck for that.

Alex sucks in a breath through his nose as John growls into his mouth and wraps his hand around Alex’s hip. He steps forward, pressing Alex backwards into the railing and boxing him in between it and his magnificent chest. Alex feels the wood dig into his lower back as John leans even more firmly against him, blocking his escape. As though Alex has any intention of leaving before he’s licked and sucked the sweat off every inch of that tanned skin.

And, oh, yes please - now that he’s gotten going, John’s giving him all of that really primal, dominant energy that Alex was hoping he might have under his benign veneer. Fuck it - Alex knows he’s an independent man of the world, and he’ll take on just about any role depending on his partner, but he’s delighted by the prospect of melting into a circle of muscle and letting John have his way with him.

So delighted, in fact, that he groans into John’s mouth and nudges his hips forward before he can remember how very still-in-public they are.

John pulls his mouth away but doesn’t allow an inch of space to get between them otherwise. “Hush, now,” he murmurs around an indulgent smile. 

“Pretty hard to be quiet when you’re--”

John’s hand slides downward and tightens possessively around his ass. Alex chokes back his moan, and it’s a good thing, because he could feel it coming out as an undignified squeak.

Even though they’re pressed tight all down the fronts of their bodies, John’s fucking stupid jeans are blocking him from feeling the full heft of the delicious thing that’s getting hard beneath the fabric.

John leans in, but his lips descend to Alex’s ear this time.

“Now, if you’re up for it, I’m fixin’ to show you a real good time.”

Alex whimpers, but it may as well be a claxon in the near total silence.

 _“Hush,_ I said,” John murmurs, smiling as he nuzzles into his neck.

“Stop fucking hushing me, asshole,” Alex growls. He can’t be quiet, not with those strong fingers digging in like-- Fuck!

John pulls back to look him in the eye, his flush just perfect to set off that ridiculous constellation of freckles. Alex tries not to stare at his full bottom lip, swollen to the perfect ripeness to bite onto. He fails.

“Come with me,” John whispers. His accent melts away at this low volume, and immediately Alex misses it - then ruefully adds it to his mental tally of weird personal turn-ons.

John takes his hand and laces their fingers together, more like crushing teenagers than grown men, and tugs him across the wooden porch, down the steps and onto the wide lawn. It’s pitch black outside the faint circle of light from the house.

“Where are we going?” Alex asks, suddenly remembering about the cults.

“Hush.”

“Just tell me.”

“Alex…”

“John!”

John stops and turns, allows Alex to crash into him, and silences him with a kiss; that works a whole lot more effectively than his shushing. “You’ll _see,_ ” he murmurs against Alex’s lips when he finally pulls back.

“Fucking-- Fine.” 

Alex pouts, but he trails after John, round the side of the house, across a large gravel lot and towards a cluster of outbuildings, towards the--

“Stables?” Alex exclaims. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“It’s nice,” John says with an enticing purr. “Warm, straw’s soft, and you can make all the noise you want.”

“Won’t that scare your stupid horses?”

John gives him a sly look and a shrug. “Oh, they’ve heard worse.”

Bastard. He doesn’t have to make it sound _quite_ so much like a challenge.

\---

Alex fucking hates the country - hates bugs and ringing silence and darkness and murder-cults - but even he has to grudgingly admit that there’s something primal and sexy about a man swiping a blanket from over a wooden railing (“Clean, I swear, don’t make that face!”), helping him up the short ladder to the hayloft and spreading it out for him over a mound of crackling straw.

John goes full Mills-and-Boon when he lights a paraffin lamp and hangs it on a nail hammered into the wooden crossbeam over their heads. Fucking cheesy motherfucker. 

Alex is admiring the scene when hot, broad arms wrap around him from behind. He leans back into the firm chest, oddly and instantly comfortable. John nuzzles the secret spot in his hair just behind his ear - how the fuck does he _know?_ \- and Alex lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched hum.

“You’re always in such a rush, city boy, but now you’re just gawping.”

“Just reviewing the accommodation,” he shoots back.

“Well,” John murmurs, as his fingers find their way under Alex’s shirt and to the sensitive skin of his stomach, “Does it meet with your approval?”

“It’s not the Ritz--” John bites lightly at his earlobe. “But ah - fuck - it’ll do.”

John tugs at the hem of Alex's shirt. "You wanna take this off for me, darlin'?"

"Do it yourself," Alex counters.

There’s a wicked smile in John’s tone. "If you insist."

John's hands slide up the plane of his chest, to the top button of his shirt. He unfastens it carefully, then glides down to the next one, humming as he worries the skin along the side of Alex's neck with lips and teeth. He takes his goddamn time, savours every button, and by the time he’s halfway done, Alex is regretting his snarky comeback. He groans in frustration and presses his ass back against the firmness hiding behind John’s jeans.

“Woah there,” John says, and nips at the corner of his jaw. “Thinkin’ I need to teach you some patience.” 

“No.” Alex squirms against him again, reaching an arm up to clamp around the back of John’s neck to pull that sinful mouth closer to the tender lines of his throat. "Enough fucking foreplay already."

John grabs his hips, holds him tight, and then grinds his jeans-covered cock up against the flesh of Alex's backside in a firm, slow circle. “Oh, no, darlin’ - I’m gonna make you go real slow.”

Not this again.

“Fucking asshole,” Alex mutters, but he submits when John's hands travel upward, hook at the back of his collar, and slide the shirt slowly down his arms and then onto the floor. The warm fingertips graze the skin of his arms, then drift back to this stomach - exploring lightly, igniting goosebumps.

"You're a real pretty thing, you know that?" John hums in his ear, sounding like he actually means it and not like he's delivering a line.

Huh. Alex is all ego, so this goes down smoothly. He shrugs to hide his pleased grin. “Guess you’re not ugly either.”

John snorts with all the confidence of someone who’s used to being ogled. He wraps his big, broad hands around Alex’s midsection and turns him so that they’re facing. “You’re more ’n welcome to take a look.”

Alex glances down and bites his lip as he untucks John’s shirt from his pants. He takes a moment to whisper his fingers along the muscles hidden underneath - all sharp dips and hard planes - and then remembers he’s not the one trying to stand on ceremony here. Instead of fucking around with the shirt’s buttons, he grabs the bottom hem and tugs the whole thing upwards, and John gamefully raises his arms and ducks forward so that Alex can slide it off.

“Much more efficient,” Alex murmurs, though he’s already half-distracted by the sculpted marvel he has just revealed. “Fuck,” he adds, because he can’t help it spilling out. John’s gorgeous, from his big chest to his narrow waist to those little lines that draw a V shape down to the part he wants to see most. 

He’s never gotten this hot and bothered from just looking before - but it makes him want to see more. His fingers scramble down to the button of John’s jeans as he lunges up for another devouring kiss, the tight heat in his belly spurring him - but although John swallows his tongue into his mouth, he grabs on to Alex’s wrists and pulls his hands away gently.

A little _too_ gently, fuck. Alex groans into the kiss. He’s in the mood to be manhandled.

John pulls away from the kiss, trapping Alex’s bottom lip between his teeth for a second before releasing him. His eyes are darker now, his voice lower when he says, “Mmm, as I recall, it’s my turn.” One of his thumbs strokes along the inside of Alex’s wrist and Alex feels his knees going a little wobbly. “You gonna behave yourself for me, darlin’?”

Alex nods numbly, like a starstruck teenage girl.

“Take your pants off for me. Just your pants, got it?”

He nods again, and John releases his wrists.

Alex keeps his eyes locked on John’s as he unbuckles his belt and slides it off - slowly, one loop at a time until it comes free, because two can play this game. He drops it on the ground, then undoes the little button and zip at the top of his pants, and lets them slide off his narrow hips and pool around his ankles.

He sees the way John fights to keep his eyes up - but then gives in and glances down, and although it’s dark, Alex sees the way his cheeks flush a little redder. John’s fingers follow his eyes, skimming down Alex’s waist, over the fabric of his boxers, and then to the skin at the top of his thigh.

“Beautiful,” John murmurs. “You're gonna open those legs up nice and wide for me, aren’t you?”

Jesus. John’s accent could make a shopping list sound like an erotic novel, and when he says stuff like this…

“I’ll do whatever it takes to get your mouth shut and your dick out,” Alex growls, though his voice is so embarrassingly full of need that the intended snark just comes out sounding desperate. 

“Patience,” John chides. “I wanna savour every inch of you first.”

As he says this, his fingers graze upward again, just to the left of Alex’s eagerly throbbing cock, and hook suggestively into the elastic at the top of Alex’s boxers. The second hand palms along his other hip, curves around to grip into his ass once, nice and firm and suggestive, before grabbing the other side of the elastic. Alex shimmies his hips eagerly and that’s all the encouragement John needs to ease the boxers down - past his straining erection - and far enough down his thighs that they slip off the rest of the way on their own, joining his pants in a tangle of fabric.

“Oh, look at you,” John murmurs, soft and awed and looking at his _face,_ not his dick. “Gorgeous.”

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s almost entirely naked while John still has half of his clothes on, or the fact that John’s looking at him like _that,_ but Alex feels a rare and disconcerting stab of vulnerability. He smothers it. He’s trying to have a spicy, sexy time here - fuck emotions.

“If I’m so gorgeous,” he snaps, “Then why the fuck are you not touching me?”

The softness in John’s eyes burns up in a new flash of passion. His arms wrap around Alex’s waist and press him close, trapping his cock against the rough fabric of his damned jeans. One hand slides up along his spine to the base of his skull, while the other goes the opposite way, down to the cleft of his ass, fingers grazing the firm muscle. John pulls Alex’s face forward until their lips are almost touching.

“Oh, darlin’, I’m gonna spend all night unravellin’ you.” He leans in close to Alex’s lips. “Till you’re beggin’.” Then he kisses at the corner of Alex’s mouth, along his cheek, all the way to his ear. “Till I can lick the tears right off your cheek.”

The eager groan spills out. Shit. Alex is usually much more in control of himself than this. But then, that’s because he’s usually setting the pace, quick and rough and careless. _That’s_ what he likes. 

What he thought he liked?

He’s never felt this kind of desperate tension down his inner thighs before. Never been savoured like a sommelier cracking open an overpriced wine.

He leans into it and follows his groan with a needy whine. “I wanna see you, come on!”

“All right, but--”

Alex quirks an eyebrow. “Yes, yes, slow, I heard you,” he teases - but his fingers are already working, scratching faint trails down the front of John’s body until they hit the waistband, then drawing together in the centre to work loose the buttons that are hiding his prize. He can’t help but graze the backs of his fingers along the rock-hard shaft, measuring, estimating.

Nah. Fuck _slow._

He wouldn’t be Alexander Hamilton if he followed every - any? - instruction to the letter.

He puts his hands on the sides of John’s jeans, but in the last second he weasels his fingers under the elastic of his briefs and tugs all of it down in one quick pull.

Since everything else about John is frustratingly, offensively, indignantly too-good-to-be-true, Alex feels a self-defeating prickle of spite at the thought that maybe John’s cock will turn out to be weird in some way - small or excessively curved or funny-shaped - but jesus _fuck._

It’s like the platonic ideal of a dick. Straight and flushed, standing up proudly, hefty without being obscene, perfect velvet skin over hardness and veins. The kind of dick a sex-toy brand does auditions for to show off their products. A supermodel dick. 

Its only flaw is that it’s criminally too far away from the inside of his body - but Alex is nothing if not a problem solver. 

John is laughing. “Bet you didn’t colour inside the lines, either.”

“I take what I want, John,” he growls, and to prove the point he puts his hands on John’s chest and pushes. He doesn’t actually have the strength to move his considerable bulk, but John plays along and lets himself fall back onto the straw, leaning back on his elbows.

Alex falls instantly to his knees, tugs off John’s jeans the rest of the way and puts his hands on the rock-hard thighs - to steady himself, and to push them wider open so that he can crawl between them. He sticks out his tongue and leans in, just close enough that he can press its tip lightly against the head. He feels it twitch, and when he swirls his tongue around in a slow, savouring circle, John groans above him.

Look who’s making the noises now, he thinks smugly.

If John wants a persuasive argument against slow, then, well - Alex knows how to make _that_ case. The recipe is simple - tongue pressed hard and flat against the base of John’s cock, eyes up through his lashes, one hand on his hip to hold him in place, the other drifting down the inside of his thigh. Lick up all the way to the tip then suck it down as far as it will go. 

He watches John watch him and sees his eyes go black, senses the tightening in the powerful muscles below his hands, feels rather than hears his rumble of delight. Then Alex stops worrying about what John’s doing, because he has a mouthful of his own to contend with.

There’s nothing grudging in the way he presses his lips tight and swirls his tongue - it’s a privilege to suck a dick this nice, attached to a human who seems worthy of it. There’s just… an awful lot of it, and he might be pretty decent at cramming things down his throat, but John’s giving him a challenge. 

He’s getting really into it, bobbing, sucking, getting the tip down past his throat, when John’s molten hums and groans turn into words.

“Hold up,” John murmurs, and Alex slides his lips off the glorious cock with one final, slow suck, strands of saliva pulling away at the corner of his mouth. 

“What? Weren’t enjoying that?” he asks hoarsely, but with a smug pout because - yeah, he knows he’s good.

“Bit too much,” John says, somehow hitting both sincere and seductive. “Your mouth is heaven, but we still have a ways to go first.”

“Oh?” Alex asks, as he leans down and - keeping his eyes on John’s, knowing his lashes look fantastic from this angle - licks a slow hot stripe along the crease of John’s thigh. He knows where they’re going, but he prefers the shortcut.

John hums hungrily as he reaches out a hand and strokes along Alex’s cheek, through the damp mess of saliva at the corner of his mouth and along his swelling bottom lip. “Yeah. Come here.” 

His thumb curls around and catches Alex just under his jaw, pressing in lightly into the tender nook of flesh there. Alex’s heart rate notches up another degree as, with just the gentle but firm pressure of his thumb, John guides him up along his body until Alex is straddling him. John’s spit-slicked cock nestles between his legs and twitches in response when Alex presses his ass down.

John bites his lip as he stares up into Alex’s eyes. “You were watching me ridin’ earlier today.” It’s not a question.

Alex grinds down again. “Yeah, so?”

John smirks. “How about you return the favour?”

Smooth bastard. “If you’re trying to compare yourself to a horse--” John bucks his hips up, and the burning shaft slides along the cleft between Alex’s legs. “Fuck.”

John does it again. “If you don’t want my--”

“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence.” 

John hums with pleasure. “We’re gonna go real slow though, darlin’, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex says, but _fuck_ _slow_ is what he thinks. The minute that’s dick’s inside him, he’s going to power-bottom his way to pleasure and just let John try and stop him.

John’s got his own scheme going, however, which becomes apparent when he produces lube and a condom from the pocket of his discarded jeans. For a second, Alex feels an indignant flush at his presumptuousness, but then he looks down at the abs and pouting lips and biceps again and figures - nope, fair enough.

“Ready for me to open you up, darlin’?” John asks, possibly the very stupidest question Alex has heard all month - and he’s had to sit through meetings with--

Shut _up,_ jesus.

He squirms and huffs in response. “Less talking, more getting the hell on with it.”

John does - but takes his sweet fucking time. 

He unwraps and slides on the condom and lubes himself up with several long, indulgent strokes. Then he reaches one hand down past Alex’s hip and grips into the flesh of his backside, tugging him open, while the other hand slides down between Alex’s legs. A slick finger caresses up his midline, ghosting over his opening, teasing, withdrawing, returning, until Alex makes an audible growl of frustration. John laughs deep in his chest, but relents and returns the finger to where it’s needed, drawing several agonised circles before finally easing in.

Alex drops his forehead onto John’s sternum and rocks back onto the delightful intrusion. After a few deep strokes, John adds a second finger, and _now_ they’re talking - there’s a little ache, a flash of that weirdness of being stretched followed by the satisfaction of fullness. And oh, that’s good now, John’s building up a nice pace, he’s--

The fingers slide out, leaving him bereft.

The fuck?

He mewls into John’s skin, squirming his ass in a futile attempt to get John’s attention back on him.

But instead of obliging, John rumbles deep in his chest. “Two’s all you're getting.”

Alex sits back and looks up. “What?”

John’s grin is ravenous. “Told you, darlin’ - slow. And since I reckon you’re in the mood to keep being naughty, I’m puttin’ the brakes on in a way you can’t disobey.”

Alex’s eyes go wide. It’s perfectly devious. Brilliant. “You motherfucker.”

John lunges, and in a burst of movement he’s sitting all the way up, Alex kneeling over his lap, and John’s got his big hand around the back of Alex’s skull. 

He leans in to Alex’s ear. “You better start easing onto my cock, darlin’, or you’re gonna get tight again.”

Christ, John doesn’t even know him, so he can’t have any idea how perfectly he’s designed this torturous challenge. Alex bites his lip, immediately more intent and focused - but focusing is hard with, well, _being_ so fucking hard, and having John’s heat and smell and _hands_ all around him.

He rises in his kneel onto trembling thighs and then shifts until he feels the blunt, burning nudge of the delicious cock that’s far, far wider than two of John’s fingers. He lets the head catch at his entrance, then braces both hands on John’s shoulders and pushes himself down until the head breaches him with a searing stretch.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” John groans, finally losing some of his cultivated cool, and Alex feels the way the thighs he’s sitting on clench tight and twitch up before John masters himself again.

Alex leans more heavily onto John’s shoulders, panting with strain and pleasure. 

“You wanna push in, don’t you?” Alex goads, half hoping that he does. “Forget this go slow nonsense and just ram home, huh?”

John lets out a low sigh and digs his fingers into Alex’s lower back. One hand slides down to where his ass is straining to accommodate John’s cock, and the still-slick fingers trace electric shocks around his opening.

“If you could feel how fucking tight you are,” John growls, “You’d make the sacrifice too.”

The earnest praise and the tickle of fingers on that sensitive spot are making him delirious with need. How the fuck is John restraining himself? It’s rare that Alex can completely let go during sex, especially sex with a virtual stranger, and he doesn’t entirely abandon himself here either - but he does allow his busy-mind to ease back and for the more primal pleasure centres to bubble up. He can’t help it, considering how much of the latter is clamouring for his attention.

Oh, fuck all that philosophy; what he needs is this prize dick buried all the way inside him, balls nudging against him, and he can’t have it.

He growls with determined frustration and eases down a little more. The stretch feels impossible, but his body slowly relents to John’s invasion, inch by endless inch. He could just force himself all the way down, get some real pain instead of this desperate not-quite-agony that’s knotting up his belly and making his thighs shudder. But then he’d lose the joy of John’s little hums and moans and his endless, hoarse stream of _yeah, that’s it_ and _you’re somethin’ else_ and _that’s good, darlin’, so fuckin’ good._

When he finally bottoms out, his chest is heaving and there’s sweat trickling down his spine, and John’s eyes have melted into adoration. Alex meets his gaze - bottom lip hanging open, his own frantic need written in all-caps in his expression - and _something_ happens. Some silent thing that makes John’s eyebrows inch up.

“Oh, _look_ at you,” John murmurs, and he is looking - really looking - at something proud and soft that Alex usually keeps shut up tight.

Alex flounders for a joke, a taunt, anything to cut this thick atmosphere. But his brain, even that busy part, has melted into the base of his dick.

There’s an easy solve, the dick-brain suggests. 

Alex clenches down, hard as he can. 

John makes a choked little inhale, tightens one hand around the back of his neck and curls the other around Alex’s hip; it’s broad enough to wrap all the way around in a way that makes Alex shiver.

“Oh, naughty thing,” John murmurs with a delighted smile. He withdraws just a little, just enough that Alex can feel the shaft shift and drag inside him, then grinds back up into him with the agonising patience of a buddhist monk. The strong hands hold him in position, so he can’t even meet the thrust.

 _“Fu-u-u-uck,”_ Alex whines, grasping for sultry and eloquent but hitting desperate-teenager.

John does it again.

“Oh, fuck, please - just, fucking go for it!” Alex groans through gritted teeth.

“No, darlin’,” John hums. “Not until you’re crying for me.”

He jostles his cock inside Alex again, then releases his hip, presses his thumb into the base of Alex’s shaft and rubs up along it, exquisitely torturous. His dick visibly twitches when John grazes the head, smearing the precome around his tip so slowly that his nerves tingle in anticipation of where the touch will go next.

Alex tries to cant his freed hips forward, manages to shimmy a bit, gets just a touch of motion, manages to lift up an inch--

John huffs in amusement and reasserts his grip and Alex loses this tiny leverage.

And what’s left of his restraint too, it seems.

“You fucking-- Fuck!” he growls, digging his fingers hard into the meat of John’s shoulders. “Asshole bastard redneck hick!”

“That’s not very polite,” John murmurs into his collarbone, breathing the words right into his skin.

“You inbred bible-bashing piece of shit cowf--”

John jerks his hips up, sudden and sharp. The glorious cock nails his prostate dead on, and Alex chokes on the rest of the word.

“What was that?” John purrs, tightening both hands in a way that’s going to leave fucking _imprints_ in his skin, and snaps up into him again. Then he holds tight and, instead of withdrawing, pulls Alex down more tightly against his groin, going deeper than he has _any_ fucking right to.

It’s so fucking _good_ and so fucking not-enough.

Alex groans and claws at John’s shoulders, just beading with the first sheen of sweat. He tries to get enough leverage into his shuddering thighs so that he can push up - even a little - and then impale himself back down again, but John has leached all of his strength out of him with this slow sensory assault - and the hands don’t let him move, anyway. 

He’s divinely, devilishly trapped. What now?

He’s _not_ going to sob on the end of this bastard’s dick - he refuses to give John that satisfaction after all this inexcusable teasing. But Alex is no novice, and he has other tricks.

“Bet you’re going slow because your stamina’s shit,” he goads, relaxing down into John’s lap. 

John rolls his eyes. “Nice try.”

“Just saying,” Alex says, his voice traitorously hoarse, “You’ve got a nice dick, sure, but I don’t think you know how to use it.” John does a little circular grinding pulse with his hips and Alex chokes on his laugh. “Okay, fucking-- Fine.”

The thumb that’s pressing into the back of his neck rubs a soothing line down the bumps of his vertebrae. 

“You could try askin’ nicely,” John teases.

“Fuck you.”

“Suit yourself,” John laughs.

Now that he’s trapped Alex on the precipice to nowhere, he makes good on his promise and starts to slowly unpick every last thread of Alex’s sense and self-control with deep, slow, grinding thrusts and light, targeted touches. 

Alex has never been so gloriously frustrated in all his life. He is whining, mewling, clawing angry red stripes into John’s shoulders - and still John maintains his agonised pace.

Then Alex can’t hold out any longer - fuck his pride, fuck making a point, he needs to rub the orgasm out of himself, stat.

He takes one hand off John’s shoulder and manages to get it ninety percent of the way towards his erection when John’s hand releases his hip and snaps out. It wraps around his wrist, and the way Alex’s cock throbs in response is almost as good as being touched. Almost.

“You’ve got _no_ patience, darlin’,” John chides. 

“I just need to--” He’s cut off by another slow roll of John’s hips.

“All right - but let me do it, okay?”

Alex heaves a desperate sigh. “Yes, fine!”

John keeps one hand tightly around his wrist and pulls Alex in for a kiss with the other - their lips graze for a second, then crash together, and despite his stoic self-control Alex can taste John’s own flaming need on his tongue. Their mouths stay locked together as John slides his hand down Alex’s sweat-damp chest, down his stomach, down to his groin--

Alex gasps into John’s mouth when the hand wraps snugly around his straining, neglected cock. John goes fucking slow here too, but it doesn’t matter - because now Alex has enough leverage to grind up and down, to jerk his hips into the circle of John’s hand, and fuckfuckfuck that’s so good now, he’s close, just another second, yes, yes--

No!

Suddenly John’s hand isn’t enveloping him, but instead his fingers are squeezing hard at Alex’s base, choking off the orgasm that was just moments away. A full-body shudder flows through him as his thighs tighten in desperate denial. He chokes into the kiss, then whines desperately as he pulls away, head empty, body trembling, as a single tear of blissfully overwhelmed denial squeezes past his tightly shut eyelid.

“Oh, _that’s_ it, darlin’.” John’s voice is full of quiet reverence.

“Please, god, please!” Alex whimpers. “Fuck, I need to come so bad. I’ll do anything, just--”

John leans up and kisses his cheek, meeting the tear that is trailing down.

“Whatever you need, sweet thing.”

With hardly an effort, John wraps one big arm around Alex’s waist and flips them over, laying Alex gently on his back and pressing down onto him, never for a second relinquishing his place buried deep in Alex’s ass. If Alex felt small before, it’s nothing like being pushed down into the straw by all of John’s considerable weight. By instinct alone, he reaches his legs up and wraps them around John’s lower back.

John’s hips pull back and then drive into him, a full-length thrust that forces the air out of Alex’s lungs.

John doesn’t stop this time; he pulls back and pushes in again - slow but speeding up. “I want you to come just from my cock, okay?” he says hoarsely into the side of Alex’s neck. “I want you to squeeze me so hard when you come that I lose control.”

This asshole better not be expecting a coherent reply, because the only sounds Alex can manage right now are little more than animal noises. He nods and sobs and curls his hips up to say _yesyesyes._

“Oh darlin’, oh honey,” John moans, redoubling his grip. “Just _look_ at you.”

Alex’s orgasm has been waiting just under the surface, so there’s not much John needs to do with his words or his body to tear it out of him.

When it explodes out of him a second later, it’s followed by a broken growling groan and then panting, whining sobs as all his muscles draw impossibly tight and then melt into nothing.

John gives just a few more pounding, grunting thrusts into the vice of his body before he jams his cock in as deep as it will humanly go and falls apart above him. It’s a glorious thing to see his eyes pressed tight and his teeth bared in pleasure, and Alex’s only regret is that he’s half-blind and two-thirds delirious from his own release and can’t appreciate it fully.

John at last stops shuddering and Alex musters enough brain cells to unhook his legs and let them fall limp onto the blanket. John groans low in his throat and shifts to one side, then turns onto his back and tucks Alex into the crook of his arm. They’re both covered in each other’s sweat already, so Alex snuggles in.

“I was wrong about you,” Alex murmurs.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. They say southern boys are meant to be nice.” He presses in a little closer to make it clear he’s teasing. “You’re a monster.”

John snorts. 

They fall into a momentary, easy silence.

“So,” Alex says. 

“Hmm?”

“I’m in D.C. a lot.”

John laughs, sounding surprised but not displeased. “That so?”

“Yup.”

“And?” he asks, faking an innocent tilt of the head.

Alex is fundamentally opposed to being on the receiving end of this sort of teasing - but, somehow, it doesn’t feel as annoying coming from John. So he slips out from under John’s arm and slides a leg over his stomach to straddle him, taking a moment to revel in the lovely ache as he spreads his legs again. He pins John’s shoulders down with his hands.

“ _And,_ you idiotic country bumpkin,” he says with an exaggerated eye roll, “I think it’s only fair that I show you how us city kids like to get intimate.”

John laughs again, this time fonder, sweeter. The sound does something uncomfortable to the alignment of Alex’s ribs. 

“You’re gonna have to work pretty hard to convince me your way is better,” John says, as his palms find the sides of Alex’s thighs and caress upwards, over his hips, up to his waist - and then John sits up, shrugging off the frankly pathetic pressure Alex is exerting to keep him down, so that he can wrap his arms more tightly around Alex’s midsection. Alex’s intercostal muscles do that weird clenching thing again, but there’s only safety and pleasure - no fear - in his response to John’s overwhelming strength.

“Brute,” he scoffs, to cover up anything else that might be showing in his expression. His fingers trail across John’s collarbone and around the firm swell of his shoulder. “I’ll win hands down.”

“You’ll have to prove it.”

“I will.”

“You’re on.” The hot hands slide up his back, one pausing at his shoulder, the other continuing up into his sweat-matted hair. John pulls him closer. “Can’t wait,” he murmurs.

Alex buries his hands in the curls on either side of John’s face and closes the last little distance between them to claim another kiss, this one much slower and more intentional, somehow more intimate. 

But even now, the corner of his brain that can never just chill the fuck out is running through his mental calendar. He pulls his lips away just far enough so that he can say, “In two weeks.”

“That’s soon,” John hums.

Not soon enough, says a brand-new part of his brain, one that seems to have just as little chill as the eternal-workaholic bit. He churns the sentiment through several mental filters. “Actually, that’s cutting it fine if you wanna get dinner reservations at the kind of place someone like you takes someone like me.”

John looks entirely unconcerned. “My name opens doors.”

“I hate nepotism,” Alex purrs, shimmying closer until his torso is pressing into John’s.

John tightens his arms further in response, and lowers his mouth to the slope of Alex’s shoulder. “I said _my_ name.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re mister bigshot city lawyer--”

A hot tongue on his skin melts away the rest of his taunt, which devolves into an undiginied moan. 

“Hush,” John says, nipping at a patch of tender skin. “You’ll get your chance in two weeks. But right now? I’m gonna show you just how many rounds a country boy can go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to me!


End file.
